Online Lead Generation Services

Do you have Content and Offers to attract prospects at each stage in the Buying Cycle?

Most companies forget about prospects at the early Buying Stage — but that’s when the prospect needs to be educated.

Prospects may not know how to solve their problem — or what options to consider. Use Content and Offers to educate about the CATEGORY of your solution and what it can do for them.

If a prospect is unfamiliar with your product or service, they need to understand the value of your product by learning about how it solves their problem.

Most companies focus on pitching the benefits of their product or service — without taking a step back to educate prospects on why they should consider this CATEGORY of product or service.

Possible Steps in the Buying Process

Step 1: What TYPES of products or services are available to solve my problem?

Step 2: How do I compare the possible TYPES of solutions?

Step 3: Which companies provide the TYPE of solution I need?

Step 4: How do I compare what various companies offer and decide which to choose?

Of course, not every product or service will go through each of these steps. The steps in your Buying Process will usually depend on:

How familiar your audience is with your type of product or service

How expensive your product or service is

How many decision makers may be involved

Content should be developed to help prospects at each appropriate Buying Stage — and Offers for each Buying Stage should be made to help move prospects to the next Buying Stage.

Lead Quality versus Lead Quantity

Not every lead will be ready to buy today. But most companies need to generate a range of leads continuously, including:

A leads — those names ready to talk to a salesperson or ready to buy today

B leads — those who are “in market” for your product or service, but may need to do more research

C leads — those who aren’t “in market” currently, but are interested in learning more

If your Lead Generation efforts can generate a steady stream of A leads, that will keep your e-commerce website busy and/or provide high-quality leads for your sales force to follow up. “A” leads are usually the smallest QUANTITY of leads — because not everyone is ready to buy today — but they are the highest QUALITY. You also need a steady stream of B and C leads — they fill your email “nurturing” series of messages.

These B and C leads can be educated over time — so they learn of your unique value and benefits.

If you keep in contact with these names, and keep making appropriate Offers to them, you should be at the top of their list when the B leads are ready to talk. And you might convince some of those C leads to become “in market”.

Your efforts will typically generate the largest QUANTITY of B and C leads — a larger pool of people you can directly educate about your benefits over time. These leads will be lower QUALITY — they will be less likely to convert to purchasers. But that’s why you start with a larger quantity of them. Effective online Lead Generation options can include:

Google Adwords continues to be an effective traffic-driver IF you’re willing to invest in regularly managing and updating your program.

Adwords allows you to EASILY and QUICKLY test — to determine exactly which headlines drive traffic more effectively, and what your ad description should say. You can learn what words motivate your audience more than others — and use those phrases in your email campaigns, direct mail campaigns, social media updates, and on your website.

Linked In offers Pay-Per-Click for business audiences. You can target your audience by Title, Function, Company, Geography, participation in particular Linked In Groups — and more.

Have you created Content and Offers that you can promote on Social Media to drive website traffic and leads? What would be useful to your target audience, given the particular Buying Stages they likely go through before buying? Have you considered:

Too many websites focus just on “words on a page.” Take those words and create some engaging and interactive formats — then use Social Media to tell your audience about them. How do you know your Social Media efforts are working?

Include periodic Offers in your Social Media updates, where you can track the number of downloads or sales using a specific Bonus Code

Use your website analytics to keep track of traffic to the pages you promote in Social Media — analyze the source of traffic to each page, to see how much traffic Social Media is contributing